I finally figured out why gimp was not getting pressure data from my graphire2 pad. I was completly un-aware of the Input Devices dialog. All I had to do was go in there and activate the pen and eraser. Now it's working perfectly, well gimp doesn't seem to use it properly for opacity but the other settings work. FYI my XFree86 setup has the pads pen, eraser, and mouse sending core events, I just didn't know I had to enable them in that dialog to get the pressure to work.
posted by TechnoMage at 10:00 PM LINK